by John Sladek
‘The spelling’s all wrong, but that’s, it’s still intelligent, you can see a living intelligence there, it’s, I guess you could call it an essay … listen, let me read some of it to you:
‘“There a like because they both sound like they begin with R. There a like they both have some syllables more than one. There a like because one is like a bird and theres a bird called a secretary and the other is like a furniture and theres a furniture called a secretary too. Or may be they both have quills which are like old pens. May be E. A. Poe wrote one when he sat at the other or is that a like? There both inky. I give up. I give up. There a like because otherwise you would not ask me why. Or there a like because there both in the same riddle –’”
Rogers hung his legs over the arm of the chair and tapped a foot on air. ‘Okay, so you had fun working on this.’
‘Fun? I – fun? We had four years of hard work, good work but too hard, some of us didn’t even make it all the way. But it was going to be worth it, we were getting closer all the time, closer and then … and now, those maniacs in Houston want us to just … stop. As if you could just stop a thing like this, just forget about it and … Look, look, here’s the damned telex, read it yourself
He smoothed out the paper and handed it over.
Dr Lee Fong Cmptr sci dept univ of Minnetonka be advised all funding ex NASA per project robber and/or any other project your dept frozen as of this date, pending internal NASA audit. Recall all purchase orders and cease all ongoing operations immediately. Address all future communications to section officer
R. Masterson
‘All this Masterson would tell me on the phone was that I couldn’t talk to Stonecraft any more, he’s suspended. And that their auditors were getting a court order to look over my books. And he practically called me a crook.’
Rogers nodded and tapped. ‘Doesn’t look good, does it? I really don’t see how you can expect the University to foot the bill for your project while you’re under a cloud like this. I mean of course you’re innocent, probably meaningless to assign guilt labels at all in a multivalent situation like this, okay I can buy that – but. But Lee, why don’t you just get a good lawyer and ride this thing out? Then when you’re cleared – who knows?’
Fong looked at him. ‘I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, lawyers, why should I get a lawyer? Whole thing’s probably a misunderstanding, Stonecraft’ll clear it up. All I want is to finish –’
‘Sure, sure, you want emergency funding from the U to tide you over, and believe me if it was my decision you’d get the bread. Only the rest of the committee might not see it that way …’ An elaborate shrug, and he was on his feet. ‘Good to talk to you, Lee.’
‘Wait, you haven’t even looked at the lab, don’t you want –?’
‘Okay. A tour. Fine, but a quickie. Then I really must …’
They left, closing the anonymous ivory-coloured door on the stuffy little room where nothing moved, or almost nothing: a telex message lay on the desk, trying to gather itself once more into the crumpled form of the inside of Dr Fong’s fist, as though it would remember bafflement and anger at its reception, as it remembered (with a misprint) the confusion at its transmission.
The four young accountants might have been four high-school boys, trashing Stonecraft’s office just for fun. And it was fun, one of them realized, catching sight of his own gleeful face reflected in a picture glass, as he passed to dump another armload of files on the floor.
‘This is kinda fun, you know?’
‘Yeah, only don’t let Masterson see you standing around looking at pictures. We gotta get the dirt on this sonofabitch before he gets back here.’
‘What the hell’s this, a bill for a buffalo? And this, for a hurricane? Who the hell buys hurricanes?’
‘I got a lot of those funny bills, just put ’em in this pile. Like this one, a Grumman Avenger –’
‘You dumb twat, that’s an airplane. Let me see those – holy Christ, forty-three thousand for a model – they must be real planes! He must be collecting old airplanes!’
‘But hey, there must be fifty, a hundred of ’em, look at this, Hellcat, Focke-Wulf –’
‘Yeah you Focke-Wulf, hahahaha.’
‘I’m serious, Bob, here’s a Liberator, a Flying Fortress, a Spitfire, no two Spitfires, a Messerschmidt, Thunderbolt, Zero, Christ he’s got a air force here, it’s like he’s getting ready for World War Two all over again …’
‘Yeah and look at these repair bills, and this … deed to a fucking airfield, what do you think all this adds up to?’
‘We’ll run it when we get them all. I can tell you right now where the fucking money came from, only question is how did he rip it off?’
Masterson was on the telephone in the outer office; they could hear every roar: ‘I don’t care where he is, I want him found. I want him back here now … Well you just make sure he does. I don’t care if you have to call out the Air Force and force him down, just don’t let him turn up missing across the border … He’ll find out when he gets … you do what? Yas, yas, I’m holding …’
One of the accountants nudged another and giggled. ‘Old Masterson wants his damn job, that’s what it’s all about.’
‘Looks like he’s got it, lookit all this shit, man, must be over eight figures – Kevin, you gettin’ anywhere with your stuff?’
‘I got it, all right. Simple, he just funnelled the money through this hick university up north, into these here dummy companies. I mean, look at these names, Rockskill Industries, Pebblework Electronics, Bouldersmith Inc – who the hell’s supposed to be fooled by names like that?’
‘Hey you twat, them files are marked TOP SECRET, you got a clearance?’
‘Bullshit, man, Stonecraft never had no clearance himself, this is all faked up. See, he got this university to buy stuff from these companies – owned by him – at about ten times market value, only we picked up the tab. Look, double-billing, I mean that’s really an old trick, I mean that’s really old, man …’
‘How did he get away with it? Didn’t this university look at their own bills? SOP, Bob.’
‘That’s just it, he looked over all the damn universities till he found this jerkwater outfit using an old computer accounting system, shoulda been scrapped years ago. There, he seen his chance and took it.’
Masterson swore next door, and the four fell silent, but only for a moment.
‘Gotta admire the old bugger, in a way. He bitched our computer too, so it passed stuff over to the next audit, and then the next – looks like two, three billion here never audited. Bob, what you got there?’
‘Damned if I know. Notes about a “secret robot project”, how he’s putting these hick university guys to work on – you know, I think this was his blind. If the hicks thought it was secret stuff, they sure as hell wouldn’t ask embarrassing questions.’
‘Robots, sheeit! You mean he told ’em NASA was making robots? Sheeit!’
‘Gotta admire the old bugger. Sure knew how to keep everything in the air, all right.’
Masterson came in cursing and laughing quietly. ‘Too bad he didn’t keep himself in the fucking air, though, ain’t it? Know what he done? Soon as he heard we were on to him, he went and suicided on us. Crashed his fucking plane and left us to clear up his shit. Shit!’ He kicked the empty file cabinet, walked up and down the room, and then stood, fists on hips, staring at the pictures on Stonecraft’s wall.
‘I don’t know, you give your fucking life to try to build something, and all the time you got some fuckhead like this tearin’ it all down. Look, there’s a picture of Luke Draeger, remember him?’ None of them did. ‘I seen him walk on the Moon, boys, I helped put him there. Or was it Mars? Anyways, NASA still means something to some of us. It means – it means – billowing exhaust clouds catching the first light of dawn, a silver needle rising, reaching for the fucking stars! The puny crittur we call Man setting out to conquer the sky, to rendezvous with his Eternal Destiny!
Call me a dreamer, boys, but I see Man leaping out from this little planet of ours, to the Moon, to the planets, to our neighbouring stars and finally beyond, to the infinite reaches of dark promise beyond – into the cocksucking Unknown!’ He turned to face them. ‘So that’s why we’re gonna bury this, boys. To protect NASA. To protect the destiny of the human race, our inheritance in the Universe. Bury it, boys. Deep.’
‘Yeah, but we got the dirt on this old –’
‘Forget it. Make out a confidential report for all heads of departments, but keep it in the family. Bury and forget, for NASA’s sake.’ Bob handed him the robot notes and he started reading them, as he talked. ‘I mean otherwise how’s it gonna look for us? Being ripped off by some dumb asshole who blows the whole wad on old planes, how’s that gonna look? Congress heard about this they’d shut us down so fast – robots, huh? Maybe I better wire the Orinoco Institute about this, have ’em drop in on this University of Minnehaha. Them Orinoco eggheads collect robots just like this dirty mother-fucker collected flying trash. I recollect they got a standing memo about reporting attempts to make robots.’
‘Yes sir, but how can we keep it in the family if we go telling the Orinoco Inst –?’
‘You let me handle that, junior. All they care about is in this here batch of notes – no need to tell ’em any financial details.’ His hand shook as he turned a page. ‘Don’t know how we’re gonna clean up this mess, get rid of them old planes and make it all look good, but that’s just what we’re gonna do. So get to work, boys. Any questions?’
‘Yes sir. Okay if we have Stonecraft sell the old planes to a NASA subsidiary at scrap value and then auction –’
‘Sell ’em, burn ’em, do what you like. Keep ’em flying, I don’t care.’
‘Sir?’
‘His last words on the radio, they tell me. “Keep ’em flying.” Just before he piled his old Belaire Something-or-other into a mountain in Colorado. If he was alive, I’d kill the sonofabitch myself.’ Masterson sat down at the telex keyboard. The boys exchanged winks.
‘Sir, I thought Belaire was an old car, hahahaha.’
‘Just shut up and move your ass! I gotta send two wires, and I don’t want to make no mistakes.’
Kevin made an invoice into a paper airplane and sailed it over to Bob. ‘Funny thing, though, it was a computer error that put us wise to old Stonecraft in the first place.’
The conference room was full of pipe smoke.
‘We’ll have to send someone, of course.’
‘Of course. To check it out. Though –’
‘Exactly. Minnetonka has a point oh three, not much likelihood of –’
‘Exactly.’
The telex message passed from one liver-spotted hand to another. ‘Still, remember St Petersburg? Point oh oh seven only, yet look what turned up. We’d best be prepared –’
‘For a revised scenario? Of course. We’ll do all the usual extrapolations, based on personnel information –’
‘Which is never up-to-date, remember.’
‘Exactly. In the last analysis –’
‘No matter how good our figures are, we have to –’
‘Send someone. Precisely.’
Someone sighed, sending pipe smoke scudding across the page.
‘Someone from the agency?’
‘Naturally. Who else could we use? And they do get the goods.’
Another sigh. ‘But the way they get them – do they have to –?’
‘You know they do. We’ve worked that out in all three scenarios, in all eight modes. To six significant figures.’
‘But our assumptions –’
‘Are all we have. In the last analysis.’
‘Undeniably. So we send someone.’
‘Of course.’
The ivory-coloured door swung open, admitting Rogers, Fong and a breeze that disturbed the wrinkled paper on the desk.
‘… can see you’re disappointed, okay but let me explain, let me just – five minutes, you can spare that?’
‘Nearly three a.m., Lee, why don’t we call it a day?’
‘No listen I’ll lend you a book, it’ll help you understand. It’s here somewhere, just sit down a minute, while I … Learning Systems it’s called, learning systems, you have to know something about them otherwise how can you explain things to your committee?’
Rogers sat sideways in the armchair again, preparing to tap his foot on air. The slow smile opening on his Mr Peanut face might have been a sneer. ‘Not my committee, Lee. Hell, I’m only one of twenty-four members. Dr Boag has the chair. And I ought to warn you, there’s plenty of hostility there. Not many committee members are as open-minded as I am about this, ahm, this artificial intelligence. Frankly, one or two think it’s faintly blasphemous – and quite a few more think it’s a waste of time.’ The smile widened. ‘Can’t say I’m in a position to enlighten them, either.’
‘Sure, that’s why I … here somewhere …’ Fong finished running his thumb along the books on his shelves and started searching through an untidy pile on his desk. ‘Because I know they’re hostile, but the committee’s our only chance. And you, sometimes I think you’re our only chance with the committee. At least you’re the only one interested enough to come here and look at … at what we’re trying to do.’ He stopped to look at Rogers’s tapping foot. ‘You are interested, a little?’
‘Gooood niiight bayyy – sorry, can’t get the damn tune out of my head. Interested, Lee? Of course I’m interested – even if I don’t see the concrete results, I feel, I sense a quality here, how to describe it, an air of imminent discovery. I’ve got faith in your little project, I think it has tremendous possibilities. I was just saying so today – yesterday, I mean – to one of your colleagues, Ben Franklin.’
‘You know Ben?’
‘We play the occasional game of handball, and I try to pick his brain – you see, I am interested – and in fact it was Ben who suggested I might drop over and talk to you some time. You or whoever was here.’
‘And tour the lab?’ Fong let the other armchair take his weight. ‘Look, I know it was a disappointment to you, I guess you were expecting more of a, a show.’
The smile again, and Rogers looked away. ‘Well, can’t say I was very impressed. I mean, all I could see was this skinny kid in a dirty t-shirt, sitting there in this glass box pushing buttons, like –’
‘I tried to explain, Dan’s just doing some delicate on-line programming, he –’
‘Yeah, well, too bad he couldn’t stop and talk for a minute. I mean just sitting there like a disc jockey or some, like that pope whatsit in the Francis Bacon painting, can’t say that impressed me, no. As for the rest, a lot of computers and screens and things, I could see those anywhere, and what are they supposed to mean to a layman? I expected – I don’t know –’
‘You wanted a steel man with eyes lighting up? “Yes Master?”, that kind of robot? Listen, Roderick’s not like that. He’s not, he doesn’t even have a body, not yet, he’s just, he’s a learning system – where is that goddamned book? I know I had it … A learning system isn’t a thing, maybe we shouldn’t even call him a robot, he’s more of a, he’s like a mind. I guess you could call him an artificial mind.’
Rogers looked at the ceiling, revealing more pock marks under his chin. Now the smile was an open sneer. ‘I didn’t know you hard-science men played with words like that. The mind: the ghost in the machine, not exactly the stuff of hard science, is it? I mean, am I supposed to tell the committee I came to see the machine and all you could show me was the ghost?’
‘Roderick’s no ghost, he’s real enough but he’s, the money ran out before we could build his body and get him ready for – but listen, we’ve got a kind of makeshift body I could show you, something like the Stanford Shakey only it’s still dead, he’s not –’
‘What makes you think I’m so goddamned interested in bodies, all of a sudden? Dead machines, dead – I’m not – that’s not what I –’
&nb
sp; ‘And even then when he’s in his body he won’t do much for a while, he’ll be like a helpless baby at first. See that essay I showed you, Roderick didn’t write that, he –’
‘What the hell here?’
‘No, that was written by a computer using a model of just part of his, part of a learning system. See, we grow it to maturity on its own, each part. That was linguistic analogy, we grew it to – if I could only find that book, I could –’
‘Forget about the damned book. I already have a book Ben loaned me, I didn’t come down here to look at dead machinery and borrow a book. I came to find out what makes you tick.’
‘Me?’
‘You, Dan Sonnenschein in there in his glass box, all of you. Christ, I’m not a cybernetician, I’m a sociologist. What really interests me is not this thing, this so-called mind, it’s your minds. Your motivation.’
‘My motivation?’
Rogers adjusted his glasses and suddenly looked professorial. ‘You all seem highly motivated to pursue this, ahm, this Frankensteinian goal, shall we say? But just what is the nature of your commitment?’
‘What?’
I want to elicit a hard-edge definition here of your total commitment. Of your motivational Gestalt, if that doesn’t sound too pompous. Why do you believe you can succeed where others have failed? Why is it important that you succeed – important to you, that is. What’s your – gut reaction to all this? And why do you feel I should get the committee to vote for it?’
‘This is silly, my feelings have nothing to do with –’
‘So you feel, anyway. You feel you’re only seeking after objective truth here, right? But that too is only a feeling. I’m trying to help you, Lee, but I need something to run with. Not just dead machines, but tangible motivations.’
‘Well … what we’re doing is important. And it’s never been done before. And it works. Isn’t that enough?’
Rogers grinned. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I respect the utilitarian ethic as much as the next guy. Gosh, science is swell, and all that. If it works, do it, and all that. But it’s not really enough, is it? What about the social impact of your work? Do we really need robots at all? Are they a good thing for society? I don’t believe you’ve really thought through the implications there, Lee. Then there’s the effect on you – the well-known observer effect.’